A few months after arriving, the skilled electrician and handyman Moises made enough money to pay a $16 deposit on a one-bedroom apartment. He works in two jobs – among the construction staff, from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., in the pizzeria, from four a.m. to midnight, but he has little to pay (such as food and used cars) and can’t go to work without him. That spring, the family learned that cheap apartments were available in a housing complex in Aurora, a city of 400,000 people outside Denver.
The Dallas Street property is an ugly brick building with each building having a dilapidated interior courtyard. The problem began shortly after the family moved in. There are infestations from mice, bed bugs and cockroaches. In winter, the heat does not work. One evening, Moises and Carmen returned home from dinner and found the entire apartment flooded with a leak in the ceiling. The hall door will not be closed because the lock is broken. At night, the entrance is filled with homeless people falling asleep. Drug addicts smoke in their lifeless apartment.
The complex’s management company, CBZ, owns nine properties in the Denver area, has been regularly accepting complaints and citations for building code violations since 2020. The owner of CBZ, brothers Shmaryahu of Brooklyn and Zev Baumgarten, announced a New York State legacy to hold it to Colorado, and to Colorado. Outlook for the United States“triggered the landlord diaspora toward more relaxed areas.” But even in Denver, CBZ received tens of thousands of dollars in fines. (CBZ did not respond to a request for comment.)
In the Dallas Street real estate, armed men (mostly Venezuelans and Mexicans) fought a ongoing turf war. According to Moises and Carmen, some of them moved friends and family into the building. Residents say these apartments are Thomadosor take over. Many tenants are forced to pay vacunaor vaccines, because it keeps them safe from harassment. “You can’t be late because you don’t know what you’ll find,” Moss said. “The guy has a weapon.”
Between 2022 and 2024, the Denver metro area received more new immigrants per capita than anywhere else in the country – 40,000, with the vast majority coming from Venezuela. At first, Venezuelans found their own way to the city. But starting in May 2023, about 20,000 Venezuelans have taken a fleet of buses rented by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who claims his state has been “invaded.” Many people suddenly arrived and many residents felt uneasy. Venezuelans washed their car windows for tips for ventilation lights and gathered in the parking lots of Home Depot and other stores in search of work. A Mexican pastor at the local ministry told me: “You don’t see it, and then all of a sudden, that’s what you see.”
Some incidents give the impression that the city has lost control of its newest residents. On July 28, 2024, thousands of people gathered in the target parking lot in Aurora to celebrate the widespread predictions of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s defeat in the general election that day. Many of the Venezuelans I met in Aurora have been there, including Moises and Carmen, who painted the cars in yellow, blue and red in colors of the Venezuelan flag. Maduro seemed to have lost the election, but won anyway, protesting against the outbreak of Venezuela. In Aurora, some attendees were drunk and noisy. Someone fired a gun into the air. “It enables people to see the entire cross-section of the Venezuelans in Aurora,” Jesús Sánchez Meleán, editor of Jesús Sánchez Meleán El Comercio de ColoradoThe most famous Spanish-language newspaper in the state told me. “Families that come out to celebrate, and other families that are bad.”
On the same day, a gunfight broke out at the CBZ residence on Norm Street, injured three people. By then, the city of Aurora had planned to condemn the property. Three to four hundred people living there have been a week’s notice to evacuate the houses. Meanwhile, CBZ was delayed by a series of loan payments and was struggling in the lawsuit. The company began to argue that Tren de Aragua members prevented them from maintaining their property and collecting rent. On August 5, reporters in the area received an email from Red Banyan, a Florida-based public relations company that CBZ had hired as part of its legal activities. “A apartment building in Aurora, Colorado and its owners have become the latest victim of violence by Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua, which has taken over several communities in the Denver area,” the email said. “The residents and building owners of these properties have been in a state of fear and chaos.”
On August 18, Cindy Romero, an American tenant at CBZ Dallas Street Property, recorded a video in which six men rushed into the corridor in her building with rifles. Later, the lens of the doorbell camera played on local news became popular. Right-wing media seized the story and used it to attack President Joe Biden. The first city councillor Danielle Jurinsky has been accusing the Aurora Police Department of failure to take the Venezuelan gang threat seriously. She visited the apartment building to interview residents and made regular appearances on Fox News. “To the point where I can identify a lot of these gang members myself.” Art Acevedo, the head of the Aurora Police Department at the time, told me, “Is there Tren de Aragua present? Yes. Yes. Is part of the city overspending? Totally exaggerated.” (Everyone told the Aurora Police Department that the Aurora Police Department had arrested ten people accused of being tied to the gang.)
Health & Wellness Contributor
A wellness enthusiast and certified nutrition advisor, Meera covers everything from healthy living tips to medical breakthroughs. Her articles aim to inform and inspire readers to live better every day.
